Nobody Said It Was Easy
by Ellienoth
Summary: Blaine comes out to his parents, but he doesn't expect them to send him into a clinic specialized in curing homosexuality. But there's Kurt, in there. And Kurt is more than Blaine could have ever asked for.
1. Chapter 1

"Where's my son?"

"Don't be afraid, sweetheart. We… we'll find a solution. You are not going to go to Hell."

"You have to be strong. It's not your fault. You'll heal, you'll see, you'll come back as straight as you've always been."

I couldn't stop thinking about those sentences, they were impressed on my skin. Memories. To the point that I could have repeated them exactly as they were said. Letting them consume my heart. My coming-out hadn't gone as well as I had hoped. My mother had started sobbing and, God, there was no sound comparable to that. It shattered my heart. My father had stood up, walked back and forth for a few minutes. He was swearing and yelling at me, asking how could that have happened and I didn't know how else to answer him. I liked boys, it was as natural as breathing. Nobody had taught me how to love, I just loved, and it felt right.

They said there was something wrong with me. They believed it was their fault and they decided without asking me. As always. They decided I would have to be healed, in one way or another. Because that filthy homosexuality was an illness, and needed to be stripped from my sick and wrong body. I would have to be turned normal, and then they could love me like they did before.

I was a freak. a monster.

They made me hate myself.

There was something wrong with me.

Somehow, I wanted to remain that way. But, of course, they ignored me, and they sent me to the St. Louis Clinic for Homosexual Disease, specializing in "curing those suffering from homosexuality."

They thought they could heal me, but things didn't turned out as they expected. Not at all. Because while I was there, I met Kurt.

My new room was horrifyingly anonymous. White walls, a white table, white parquet, a white stool, a painting of some snow and a window where the sunlight filtered through the curtains and reflected on all that white, making the whole room dazzling .

I had arrived there at late night, so I had been sent to my room quite informally. They had explained to me things that I was too tired to remember, and I woke up the next morning in an unknown bed, in an atrociously bright room, alone.

Empty. Wrong. Sick. Abandoned.

It was eight o'clock, and I could only remember pieces of instructions given to me the previous night. Wake up, put on the uniform you will find in the dresser, go downstairs, have breakfast and then go to the reception, where you will be given the daily schedule.

It was a robotic life, with no feelings. I wondered what the doctors thought of us. Who knows what they believed. Their cold, sharp glances were torture.I always felt judged. What did I do that was so wrong? I could have never imagined being punished for falling in love.

I put on the plain white t-shirt and the too-big pants that sagged annoyingly on my hips. That same, horrible colour that made everything terribly trivial and stupid.

They wanted to uniform us. Make us one, identical, complete, right, correct. Normal.

I went out into the hallway. My hair was a mess, but I didn't really care. Why should I have tried to look like somebody I wasn't? To be better? To not suck so much? I already was something terribly wrong and horrible, so what did it matter, really?

I went downstairs with the ten other guys from my floor. How many of us were there in that clinic? Twenty? Thirty? Everybody at the same time? And they wanted to heal us? Was it even possible to heal?

I found myself in an enormous white room where about thirty people dressed indentically were getting their breakfast and putting it on their plastic trays.

I took a tray and went to the end of the line. The guy in front of me was slightly taller than me, with light brown hair incredibly perfect for being stuck in that prison. He observed everything with an absent look, the cerulean eyes fixed on a far away place. He looked like a kid, not right for that place, and in the end I wasn't so different from him.

I got to the food faster than I'd expected and the breakfast ladies gave me a mug filled with coffee and a couple of unappetizing biscuits with absent looks on their faces

We sat down in the order we had gotten there, so I ended up across from the boy that was in front of me in line. It was impossible not to notice him between all the identical bodies. He was bright, he almost sparkled. The prisoners were divided into groups, by age or by table. Some of them remained alone and they really looked miserable.

I was miserable. I was angry. But I detested myself most of all. I didn't want to end up isolated for the rest of my life, so I forced myself to say something to the guy in front of me.

I didn't know how to start.

"I'm Blaine." I said, nut he didn't realize that I was actually talking to him. In fact, he didn't answer, so I cleared my throat.

He barely looked up, not particularly interested. It seemed like he was in his world that was closed to everyone who tried to arrive from out here.

"I'm… Blaine." I repeated, dipping one of that sandy biscuits into the dull coffee and blushing like an idiot.

"I'm gay, not deaf." He answered, shifting awkwardly on his chair.

Amazing. I had found the nicest person in the whole clinic. Perfect. Just my luck. I shouldn't have let my need of talking to someone win over. I just wanted a normal conversation, but it probably would have been better if I had of just kept my damn mouth shut from the start.

I ended up observing the muddy colour of my coffee, forgetting everything and with the sick sensation that the day had started the wrong way. All that white bothered me, all that clean, all that light… As if we were dirty. And we even paid to be there.

"I'm Kurt, anyway," he said then. His face was an impenetrable mask. He was putting some sugar in his coffee without paying particular attention. He always seemed too distracted to control everything that was happening around him and I wondered how much time he had been there, and if he was healing.

Maybe I should have just asked.

"I… I'm new here."

Kurt nodded and didn't look surprised at all.

"It was obvious."

I swallowed the sandy, tasteless biscuit. It left a sort of bitter taste in my mouth.

"How could you tell?" I asked, wondering if he was naturally so acidic or if I was just so unpleasant that I made the idea of a conversation detestable.

The chattering in the room was calm and emotionless. It echoed on the white walls and became terryfingly distorted.

Kurt shuddered.

"You still look around as if all this damned white is going to eat you alive. You look at the other patients and you wonder if they've healed. And you still have this dismayed look on your face that everyone has on their first day."

I burnt my tongue while I was drinking and I tried not to show it.

"Then I'll become like you?"

He made a sceptical noise, sighing.

"You don't need to be as a basket case like I am."

"Is "basket case" really a thing?"

He nodded, lowering his glance and trying not to smile.

"I'm more sick than it seems."

I bit my lower lip. Kurt had no idea how desperate I was. I wondered if he hated himself. If he felt guilty, alone, dirty, wrong, crazy, isolated, forced to adjust to a stereotype that couldn't reflect him, a delusion to everyone – most of all to his parents – a mistake.

That feeling was like an obscure beast nesting inside me, that whipped with anger, growing with every breath. It consumed and swallowed everything and it was more present every second.

"Look, I see you're really busy, but if you just explained to me how things are here… It would be fantastic," I muttered, not knowing how to define the glance he gave me with those color-changing eyes. They really were big, and the looked at me in a cryptic way.

"Shut up. Tell them they're right. Obey. Suffer in silence. Don't make bonds. Be as normal as they want you to be."

I swallowed.

"What will they do to me?"

Kurt shut up, biting his lip until it became white and then he nailed me with a glance and lowered his voice almost hissing.

"They will kill you. They won't let you be yourself and they'll make you hate yourself."

I smiled in a bitter way and looked away.

"I wouldn't worry about that, I already hate myself."

"I used to say that, too. Trust me, they're not worried about that." he whispered, in such a low voice that I almost believed I had imagine it. "Now stand up and put everything away. Leave it on the table. It's time for the electric chair." he said, and then he passed me, fading into the middle of all the other identical patients.

Sooner or later maybe I would have started recognizing them. For now, even if it seemed strange, the only one I wanted to talk to was that usually-silent boy I just talked to.

There was something dangerously charming in him. That something was telling me that I shouldn't have let him pass through my life as if he never did.

I didn't decide it, I could have ignored every living creature in that building, but the truth was that I was afraid to be alone.

The paramedics clapped their hands two times. There were three at the entrance of the cafeteria. They told us to follow them with a smile that didn't really reassure me. I felt like a rabbit in a cage, Kurt talked about an Electric Chair, and I really wanted to escape from it. To run way.

To find my freedom, to be who I really was, to love who I loved without being forced to kill a part of me.

Why did my parents do this to me? And why did I let them do it? Oh, yeah, I hadn't had the choice.

They lead us to a set of doors, white as always, with a silver handle and they made us enter one at a time. I didn't understand what was happening. From inside the doors came some quiet sobs, and I wondered if they were hitting them or if they were talking with a therapist about particularly painful topics, but I couldn't really have an answer.

Kurt was in the line next to mine, he held his arms over his chest and he seemed to be trying to curl himself up to not have to go through that door.

He felt me watching and he looked up. He eyed me with compassion, maybe realizing that that was the first time for me. The first day. The first everything.

It was my turn and I kept looking at him, until he mouthed, "Don't cry." I didn't under stand what he was saying until I entered and they closed the door behind my back.

In front of me there were two doctors and a projector. A lot of pictures of naked men slided on the white wall in front of a chair. Next to it some metal clips linked to a strange machine.

Electric chair.

I was starting to understand.

I already wanted to cry.


	2. Chapter 2

Pain. It was all that I felt, it shook me inside and it just really hurt. It started from my groin and reached everywhere in my body. Continuous violent shocks that were consuming my nerves. They had undressed me and put me on that white chair, tightened my wrists with some ties and held my ankles to the chair's legs with some belts. Then, they had taken out the clips and put them mostly on my groin and chest.

I didn't think that the pain could be so strong, but the worst part was how I felt inside. To every photo that passed through the projector corresponded an electroshock. In my mind, the idea of being a mistake was growing strongly. What did I do to deserve that treatment? Was I really so sick? Did they need all that violence to heal me?

The sweat was dripping all along my chest, my back, and my forehead.

_I must hate what I thought I loved. I couldn't like it. If I did the pain would have stopped._

I felt the tears in my eyes, they burnt as if they were digging into my soul. It felt like nails were making holes into me from the inside, all that I was was falling to pieces. I was a sicko, a freak.

_Yes, but I was born this way._I claimed and tears started rolling down my face. Kurt had said not to do that, he begged me not to cry. But it was too late, I couldn't do it. It hurt so much. I felt miserable. I was afraid, and it hurt.

The two doctors in the room eyed me accomplishedly and one of them took out some sort of rope. Everything was foggy so I couldn't really understand what was happening. It seemed like the world was slipping from my control while I was trying not to look at the pictures in front of me. I didn't want to look if looking meant suffering.

One of the men held my jaw and forced me to look firmly at the continuous sliding of all those men. Their skin, their eyes, their hair… and I couldn't stop watching. Then he took my head and lowered it so that I could see the pictures and leave my naked back undercovered and undefended.

And then I started screaming. They were hitting me repeatedly with the rope. It scratched and burnt. I screamed but I couldn't move. I was stuck, even while my back felt like it was exploding in flames. The electroshocks hadn't stopped, and big tears were streaming down my face. My jaw hurt and my back was so skinned that it was bright red.

That had been the longest fifteen minutes of my entire life. When the doctors were done torturing me, I couldn't even stand up because my legs were shaking too much. All that I could think was, why?

They told me to stand up, and I swear I tried, but my ankles and knees were trembling too much. Even worse, my back felt like fire with every movement.

"This has been your first session. We're sorry to see you crying, Mr. Anderson, but you have to be strong. Weakness is the way to vice and back down. Weakness goes next to homosexuality. Be strong and you'll heal soon, you'll see ." He paused and I looked up, shaking in pain, to look my torturers in the eyes through the curls that had fallen on my forehead. They're expressions were emotionless and I wondered if they took classes to stay so cold to others' suffering. But maybe they didn't even see us as human beings. Maybe we were just some of nature's jokes that they liked to fix.

"Now, Mr. Anderson, take your clothes and go to your class. From what we hear, it will be a very interesting one. Oh, and we hope you already gave your personal stuff to the secretary when you arrived, if you don't, you'd better do it soon or at the next inspection, you'll risk a heavy punishment. Anyway, don't give up. There's always a solution. You'll heal, you'll see."

I clenched my teeth and forced myself to stand up, suddenly risking to fall on the cold, tile floor. My knees burnt and my whole body felt like it had been immersed in hot lava. I felt sick, as if I was about to throw up. I forced my body to crouch and my fingers to take those anonymous-white pieces of cloth and put them on. It was terribly painful and when the T-shirt brushed my back I screamed and my knees gave out. It burned. It hurt so much that I thought I wouldn't be able to stand all that. It was as if someone was scraping my skin repeatedly with sandpaper, I was going crazy.

Or maybe I already had.

One of the two doctors came near me and pulled the T-shirt down my back leaving a trail of pain all along my spine. The put my pants on forcedly while I surrendered to the pain. I almost fainted and I felt like the ground was disappearing from under my feet. They grabbed me under my armpits and – without making sure I could walk – they tossed me out there where the light hit me like a punch in the face. I couldn't see. Everything was spinning around me, everything was falling down, everything was collapsing.

Every step scratched me violently as if the cloth was filled with needles. I could still feel the buzz of the electroshocks that had repeatedly hit me. It was worse than dying, I swear it was. I felt like a zero, like a suffering animal, or even worse. I felt like I didn't exist, I felt like I was only _pain_.

I tried my best to walk but then I collapsed to the ground without even knowing what was happening. It was all blurred. All I could see was white, it must have been the ceiling. Then two light-blue eyes, two enormous, bright eyes and nothing else.

It was total darkness but the pain didn't stop. I couldn't rest. Not there.

It smelled like lavender, I don't know why it was the first thing I felt. I was lying on a bed with half-new blankets, I could feel the rough consistency of them that hurt my wounded skin.

Oh, now I remembered. The electroshock, the pictures, the fire on my body, the humiliation. The ground and then those eyes.

Where had I already seen them?

I opened my eyes and it felt as if I was ripping them. Suddenly, the light hurt me. I immediately realized I was in my room – the horrible white one I was assigned to – and I guessed the other ones were exactly alike. I tried to look around and when I turned my face my neck hurt and my back burnt. It was better if I keep on lying still.

Then, I noticed a note on the little table next to my bed. It had been written with a blue gel pen and – from what I could see – in very nice handwriting. It suddenly reminded me of the light-blue eyes and I quickly grabbed it, even though my spine whipped me mentally for that.

I read it with trembling hands and the taste of my tears still in my mouth.

_They let me take you here, upstairs. I wanted to stay but the rules are clear, and I couldn't. I hope you wake up soon. When you do, come downstairs, because you won't be exempted from today's program. I'm sure it has been really hard to stand all this on your first day. They say everything should get better, but I still haven't experienced this "better," yet. Well, see ya. Kurt._

I wiped a tear from my cheek. He helped me but he couldn't stay there looking after me because we were just some stupid faggots that took advantage of every occasion.

_That_ hurt. That thought. That constant sensation of inadequacy. Those absurd rules created to keep us prisoners of ourselves until we would have exploded in some uncontrolled hate for what we were. Yes, that was obviously a cure.

I could imagine Kurt, so beautiful, so cold. So helpless. It seemed like an uninterested person but maybe that was just the façade that he had created to survive inside there. Maybe I should have created one, too. But what was the real Kurt like, then? I had only seen his mask.

What was he like?

I had to move and I shouldn't have thought about that. Human contact was barely allowed in that place. I couldn't enter into a clinic to cure homosexuality and have a crush for one of the patients. I just couldn't. It wouldn't have been possible and I would never be able to heal.

Could I heal?

Who knows.

I stood up feeling the wounds on my back burning. I had to be strong and create a façade.

I had to invent the perfect mask for me, I was sure it existed.

But before that, I had to find Kurt. I had to thank him I had to ask him what else would happen. I had to talk with someone or I would have gone crazy. God, that place, those people, those colours…

Were _we_ the monster or were _they_?


	3. Chapter 3

"_Why are you here?"_

It was lunch time already, and my body was still screaming to every move I made, but it was time to go into the cafeteria and I managed to sit next to Kurt again and to ask him that question that was almost jumping out of my mouth. I needed to confide, I needed a friend and I needed not to feel like the only _insane_ person in there. I needed someone who could understand. Someone who could help me. I needed _Kurt_.

He turned to me, as distractedly as ever, and seemed almost surprised to see me standing.

He didn't answer.

I grabbed the tray and the muscles in my arms trembled dangerously, remembering the electroshock from a few hours before. Kurt put a hand under my tray supporting mine with one hand and his own with the other. His eyes darted worriedly to my expression and then returned to his impassive expression, as if he had just remembered something.

"You should have stayed in bed longer," he said, taking back his arm when he was sure that my hands had stopped shaking. Sweat was covering my forehead and it slipped in drops all along my back, pushing me to the edge of insanity. I was broken, it was like moving a broken machine. Difficult and useless.

"I was awake. I won't heal in a day and you said I should come down as soon as possible."

He snorted, biting his lower lip nervously and clearly avoiding looking at me.

"Yeah, you should have been able to… It doesn't matter. Forget it." he answered and turned to the white-dressed women the were serving bowls, though I couldn't see what was in them from where I stood.

"Why are you here?" I repeated and he turned slightly in my direction, always avoiding my eyes, but I could see his clearly. The resignation, the pain like a blind bolt, the bitterness, bright like neon signs. Signs that warned about danger, the eyes of a hurt person, a person that – once attached – I wouldn't be able to leave. I knew myself, I knew my attitude. I had a thing for the others' weaknesses. I liked fragilities and Kurt was a wall, trying to hide them, but I could see them. That was driving me crazy.

"Because it's the right thing to do." he answered, as I grabbed a dish – which contained a watery-colored steak and some gummy salad that made me want to vomit. Did they want to starve us? Were we as low-quality as the food?

We sat one in front of each other again and, for a few minutes, we ate in silence. I felt the stare of one of the doctors burning into the back of my head. They were all waiting for us to do something incredibly reckless or unforgivable or _sick_ while we were distracted.

"The right thing?" I demanded then in a low voice, I wasn't able to let my mind forget that topic. I wanted to understand, I _had_ to understand.

Kurt lifted his eyes from the dish and looked at me as if I were torturing him. He was begging to change the subject, and maybe I should have done that.

"Please, help me understand what you mean. It's important," I murmured, leaving the fork and the knife on the table, because I had just realized I really didn't want to eat. The photos I had seen that day, the doctors' faces and the eyes that had flashed in front of me, kept appearing in my mind. My stomach had just decided to go on strike.

"Why is it so important?" he asked, lowering his glance as much as possible and stabbing a piece of steak in his bowl.

I bit the bullet because my back had just decided to hurt particularly badly. The pain burned all along my spine as if somebody was putting vinegar on my fresh wounds.

"Because," I said through my teeth, "I don't understand why we have to be here. Are we really sick? My parents said that if I won't heal, I'll go to hell and the world is going to hate me. I want to heal, I _want_ to see them happy, I want everything back to the way it was before, when I was a kid and nobody cared about what I loved. Why are you here? Can we even be healed? How can someone your age have been trapped here? How did we end up here? I- I-"

"I'm here by my own choice," he interrupted me and my jaw dropped in shock. I was definitely not expecting that answer. How could you go into a place where they despised your identity, where they took you and tortured you until you couldn't help but hate yourself for what you were, for how the world saw you and where they taught you how much it could hurt to be different?

"What… How…" I gasped, but I didn't know what to say. To me it was inconceivable. When I had come out to my family I had hoped they would understand, that they would love me anyway, or that they would at least have had the decency to accept me. Things had gone a lot worse, and the whole family had fallen to pieces, that's why I ended up in St. Louis while they stayed at home, praying for me. The situation was so horrible that I almost cried just thinking about it.

"I did it for my dad," he explained, keeping his eyes on his food, as if I wasn't in front of him.

"So he sent you here?" I asked, realizing I had a knot in my throat which I could add to the list of my physical pains. I was falling to pieces. I was crumbling.

I could still see all the projected men. The images projected on my eyelids when I blinked. I could never forget them. And I _liked_ it, I knew that.

"No, _I_ asked him for permission to come here."

I couldn't stop staring at him. I couldn't breathe. I was frozen.

"But… why?"

He set his fork on the table pushing the dish away as if the very thought of eating made him sick. He looked to his side for a second, and that he turned to me, riveting me with those eyes that I had seen clearly after the torture. That had brought me in my room and put me to bed. Two eyes that now were glowing with pain.

"Because in my town they were all whispering behind my back. Some idiots trashed and destroyed my dad's garage. They called him day and night to tell him that his son was a fuckin' fag, that he should be ashamed of me that I was a monster. They spraypainted "gay" into the side of his car and it took him days to fix it. And he wouldn't even let me help him. So I asked to be brought here. To try to heal.

"At the beginning he didn't want to – he knows as much as I do that this isn't an illness, that it's something I was born with – but I begged him to let me. So I could pretend to be cured. So I am far from home and those homophobic assholes will stop tormenting him almost more than they did to me."

"So you're healing?" I asked, trying to look away, but that particular shade of blue was occupying all my sight.  
He smiled bitterly.

"Do you really think you can be healed of loving someone?"

I lowered my eyes, disheartened and confused at the same time.

"And what will you do once you get back home? It will be the same as it was before. You can't run forever." I told him – maybe I shouldn't have – but all the electroshocks I received must have shorted my brain or something. I couldn't control what I was saying anymore. There were no more filters.

"I'll pretend to have healed," he answered easily, not looking at me directly and looking to his side. Light washed over his face and I could see the tears sparkling, but refusing to drop from his eyes. He would have never let them fall. _Ever_.

"What? But you can't… you can't live a miserable life just to please the others," I stuttered in shock. I felt sick, like I was about to throw up. Was it possible that the only life we could live was that? To lie? To live miserably?

_God, no._

I wouldn't let myself believe it.

"I can do it. I just have to decide it. It's not so important," he answered, and I could stop myself. I instinctively leaned a hand on his, I don't know why.

It was a big mistake. His eyes widened, big as saucers, and his face constricted in a grimace.

He had no time to say anything because some arms took me and lifted me from the chair, dragging me outside while Kurt watched with a scared face.

What did I do? What did I do wrong?

The brought me into a little room. They were two tall men and they shut the door behind them flinging me into a corner. I looked at them with terrified eyes.

"All affectionate gestures are expressively forbidden in the clinic," ordered the one with dark eyes and glasses. If it wasn't for that particular thing, I would have said they were twins but I was too busy being scared to worry.

"I… I don't…" they pushed me against the ground again.

"Forbidden!" repeated the other, and the next second, they were on me. From that moment I decided to switch off my brain and just scream.


End file.
